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Comment by beeflet | Hacker News Reader

it will be behind on security gimmicks

It’s not a gimmick feature. It’s just the “user” is always, inherently, in “control” of the kernel itself when it comes to Linux. That’s not true with NT or Darwin. You (a 3rd party) can always verify NT or Darwin’s “integrity” by checking it’s cryptographically signed by Microsoft or Apple. Other than assuming that Valve (or Sony, Nintendo, Debian, SUSE, RedHat, etc) is the “trusted kernel” for your game, you can’t do that with Linux. And the moment you say “My application only runs on Kernels signed by {insert organization}, are you really “Linux”?

The reality is the overwhelming majority of desktop linux users are probably using a kernel shipped by their distro, be it Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Valve, whatever. Those kernels could be attested.

I agree with your sentiment though. It's a wild future we're considering, just so some people can play video games and complain less about supposed cheaters (or often, skill issues, but I digress).

Yeah, I agree. Majority of people running any OS are expecting a vendor that manages their OS. Even those running Arch are rarely patching things by hand and just following whatever is in the official repos or wiki.

However, I believe part of the huge positive sentiment about “Linux gaming” online is that, so far, it’s been truly “Linux gaming”. Once it becomes “Valve’s Gaming” it’s really no different than PS5 or Switch using Linux for its base OS but it’s really Sony or Nintendo’s device.

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